Thomaso, or the Wanderer is mid-seventeenth-century stage play, a two-part comedy written by Thomas Killigrew, The work was composed in Madrid, c. 1654.
Though Killigrew drew upon Mateo Alemán's picaresque novel Guzmán de Alfarache for source material, his Thomaso is generally considered strongly autobiographical; it is no accident that the title is the Spanish version of the playwright's given name.
Like his earlier comedy The Parson's Wedding (but unlike the tragicomedies that make of most of his dramatic output), Thomaso features abundant bawdy humour and sexual frankness, to the discomfiture of generations of traditional critics.
Theatrical rival Richard Flecknoe published a book titled The Life of Thomaso the Wanderer (1676) that lambasted Killigrew with a sweeping personal attack.
Critics and commentators have not hesitated to point out the obvious faults in Thomaso; verdicts like "rambling, long-winded"[6] and "indulgent and inert"[7] are common in the relevant literature.
"Aphra improved greatly on the original, and, in the first of the two plays she made from it, produced a masterpiece of light-hearted comedy, broad and outspoken, but not lacking in beauty of form and language.
[10] Commentators deplore Killigrew's misogyny – though some also note the curious streak of proto-feminism in his work, as when Angellica protests the "slavery" that women suffer.